Brexit and Cultural Challenges

The below comments are from an English friend of Stephanie McCarthy, our writer and photographer in Australia.  She passed them to me which I share along with her pictures of some of the incredible avian life.  The sobering challenges of differing cultures in contact with each other is as old as when homo sapiens left Africa and began to migrate across the world, sigh....- GNH

From England, some Concerns about Brexit and Assimilation of Cultures
from a British Observer 

I had to add my comments to both yours (Stephanie's) and Terry Field's recent Brexit and immigration et al.  We are going in the rudderless direction of a banana state if someone soon doesn't come up with a meaningful deal on leaving the EU. 

I have to say that they (the EU) have not been entirely helpful in this process as, obviously they don't want us to leave.  I think they should have thought about that and given some concessions when David Cameron flew to Brussels to obtain just that and came away with nothing, which prompted the Brexit vote.  

There are certainly faults on both sides - Theresa May was too soft at the beginning of the negotiations and allowed the EU too much say in what they, and us, can and cannot do.  I can't see what good a postponement of the 'deal' will do unless someone can come up with a wonderful plan in the interim.  What a mess! 

In all probability we will remain in the EU as they don't want a no deal Brexit any more than we do but that is highly likely as an alternative to Theresa's plan being accepted.

On to the atrocity in New Zealand.  We were bowled over by the outpouring of the people there, the vigils and the hugs given to Muslims.  While we in no way condone what happened, we both said that the reaction of the New Zealanders just wouldn't happen here.

It's probably because we have so many Muslims here (open door policy of the Blair government) and also the fact that there is no way they will attempt to integrate with the rest of society.  

The latest news is that a head teacher in a Birmingham primary school (90% Muslim pupils) has had his attempt to open up the children's narrow views by introducing subjects such as gay relationships, same sex relationships etc., thwarted  as the parents of the children have made such a fuss that he has been forced to backtrack.  

They will never integrate until the Imams discover they are in the 21st century and start preaching the values of the host country and allow males and females to worship together.  It is only recently that these same schools in Birmingham segregated girls from boys in class (because it is their culture) until the local authority was involved and came to a compromise whereby the girls were in the same classroom as the boys but in a separate part of the room.  Some compromise!

I dread to think what will happen to this country.  As you say, Britishness has all but vanished as time after time we have bent over backwards to placate the immigrant.  

As Julia Gillard (New Zealand) once famously said, and I paraphrase, 'you came here of your own free will and if you are at odds with the customs of your chosen country I suggest you use that free will and take the return journey'.  But they won't as it's too easy to obtain benefits, for which we tax payers pay. 

Soap box is being put away now but I thought our views would be of interest to you. - a British Observer

Europe and the U.K.

Europe is Experiencing Two Forces, which the British Press Misdescribe by Terry Field

The economy of continental Europe is recovering, with real and substantial growth happening, and with major areas of innovation showing real sparkle and success.

These are early days, and large areas of Europe are not having such a good time, but that is to be expected, as the shape of the economy changes, some areas decline, some activities remain permanently depressed to the point of collapse as other areas previously poor suddenly become wealthy as the dice of capital spending fall where they must. Thus, in Germany, the appearance of a new right wing force that has nearly 13% of the Bundestag expresses both anti-migrant fervor and dislike of Europe. 

Terry at his home in Florida, looking through his camera into the future?

A quick look at the map shows where this is happening. It is happening in the extreme east of the country bordering on Poland. Poland, and un-indebted country, with still very low wages, has sucked economic life from the German neighbouring regions as it has grown fast and furious for a decade now. The same for Germans near the old German Sudeten Czech border lands.

The British press, generally right wing, and nearly always nationality-obsessed as they always are, suggest that this new 'nationalism' will derail 'Europe', yet the real evidence of what is happening suggest the reverse.

The first thing to observe is that there is no call for national assertiveness from many of these 'marginalized' Germans. It was interesting to listen to a local German station interview Germans who had voted right-wing and who lived near the old Sudeten border. Of all borders in the world, this one sears the mind of those who have a bent for history as being similar in its banner of tragedy to that of the border between India and Pakistan. In the Sudetenland, firstly, the Slav peoples living there were expelled by the German government when it as annexed by Hitler. Then, after the collapse of the Reich, the reverse was done to Germans- and with a bloody and dreadful vengeance.

It therefore came as a surprise that these modern, poor Germans, when interviewed, said gleefully that they would like to swap and become ‘Chech Sudeten Germans’ and leave Germany proper!

Why? Because that part of Czech is doing very well thank you.

In other words, for you nationalists who are obsessed with the nation state, the real message of the political developments in Germany, now with a Chancellor unable to form a proportional representation coalition - is that the problem, not the solution - for these people - is that they are subject to a German national and federal budget. Their distress is NOT making them look to a 'greater' Germany. Many wish to become Czech!

Because they will be prosperous, or so they think. 

Of course, the border with Poland excludes such dreams, history and prejudice being what they are. But these old 'Ossie' Germans are the old, stranded folk as their children moved to Frankfurt, Wuppertal, the rich Rhineland and the southwest to prosper after the wall fell. These poor old folks living on cracked socialist dreams are no argument for the nation state at all.

Even they recognize they are simply the flotsam of history. Self-pity and morbid introspection should be, and is, is the dominant emotion there, not nationalist fervour. Nigel Farage (United Kingdom Independence Party leader) was reported to have been engaged with this political uprising. Some uprising.

All it does is destabilise the Chancellorship for a period. But the solution here is European wide intervention. These marginal areas where misery has descended require the subsidies the immobile old live by. 

Nobody can or should imagine Europe is a failed idea because of this. It would be like saying the sea is not the solution for the life of fish, after a pod of pilot whales, stranded and dead on the beach have been observed.

Labour mobility and open borders are the solution here. Subsidy is needed. All else is irrelevant. National context is a simple irrelevance for these people, but it is a massive problem for Europe.

Plainly the German political structure amplifies division and it was designed to do so. The dominance of the German state in Europe is a problem for Europe, and the political incapacity of Germany points a searchlight at the need to radically reduce the power and political dominance of the nation state in the context of Europe. If that does not happen, Europe will fracture further, and it may disintegrate entirely. Yet that will simply impoverish all the members.

Right, an adult and adolescent owl resting on a tree branch at Terry's domicile in Florida.  Wisdom is present in many cultures.  Photo by Terry, 2017.

 The truth of the failure of the idea of the all-powerful nation state in Europe is the central reality. Many may deny that, may 'rally to the colours' in ignorance and superstition, but their success will be pyrrhic. In Europe, nationalism is self-defeating. Impoverishing. Diminishing of all aspects of high-functioning human life. Polish ultra-nationalism strands poor Germans unfortunate enough to live on its border. I know of no circumstance where nationalism in Europe offers anything worthwhile, good and true.   

Brexit and a Paralyzed Chancellor

Frau Merkel, always treading on eggshells, now has crocodiles hatching under her feet. There is now no appetite at all in Germany for kindness to Britain; rather they are enraged by us. 

British politicians claim the Spanish are 'arguing Britain's corner' (and if that is not grasping at straws I do not know what is), yet they publicly deny it and call the British political class utterly deluded.

Robust European economic growth will take much of the quite small sting the continent will feel at the British leaving with no comprehensive trade deal. It will be ruinous for British trade, however.

The rise of disparate political nationalism in Austria, Germany, Poland, Slovakia. Czech, Hungary, imperil the freedom of movement of the great political regions of Europe - found in France and Germany - and that pushes them harder now to cut Britain out utterly.

Europe as a political entity is more uncertain than ever, flanked by weak, self-destructive nationalist members, and not moving to secure its social fabric as it must. 

In such a context a rabidly nationalistic Britain is more and more hated. And emotions drive policy.

Britain faces social disorder now based on nothing more than its present, known lamentable condition.

It is visibly moving out of the company of advanced humane forward-facing nations. That is palpable to all interested enough to see with clear eyes. 

I repeat what I wrote at the point nationalism tore my country into its present path. I love my country with a passion, but that love is directed at a Britain that was dying fast at the time I was being born.

Now I shudder at its future, and that of my beautiful step-children, and my exquisite step-grand-children.

On November 23, 2017, Terence Field wrote:

Today I read that the British IFS (Institute of Fiscal Studies) identifies suggests the debt profile will not recover to that of 2008 until 2060. 

I had penciled in a thirty-year period, ending about 2038, but they pencil in an additional twelve years.

Why?

Many reasons, related to extremely poor absolute and relative productivity, stubborn failure of the governments of the nation to adjust the pattern of the economy away from a 'rentier' be, and the consequent continuing need for incremental net state borrowing to allow spending 'commitments' to be met.

There is a projection of low growth of about 1.3, 1.4, 1.5 percent per annum. This is insufficient to maintain full employment in normal circumstances, but there are now no normal circumstances, thus more and more 'working' people will be paid insufficient to live, and state income subsidy will be required to increase and increase.

The world outside Britain grows well and strongly. Save for only two other economies in the entire world of economic activity, Britain exhibits persistently falling real incomes.

Poverty desperation and social dislocation is becoming the experience of a larger and larger proportion of the British people.

I could expand to describe an even grimmer picture, but frankly there seems little point. What is written here is quite sufficient.

Productivity, Camels and the Sahara Desert

I note that since the decision of the uninformed mob - in contrast to that of the 'Will of the Nation in Parliament Assembled' to exit the European political and social enterprise, inward economic investment has collapsed to a net negative-  a dis-investment. And that is simply the first reaction. No investment, and negative investment, after a few decades, makes the output resemble that of the Toureg in the Sahel. Productivity is all an economy has. Without productivity, there is no economy. It is core, fundamental, not a matter of trivial relevance.

The Brexit fantasists abused rational people as 'scaremongering' when we described the dreadful long-term consequences of this deluded nationalism. In reality, all we have seen so far is a pale imitation of what is to come. The chilling projections and current economic metrics are without the effect of real Brexit.

The immense productivity gains experienced in the advanced regions of the developed and the rapidly developing world eluded Britain. Britain is an anachronistic island - in every sense and not just the physical - of antique, rentier economy, broken class-ridden politics, society in a state of incipient violent disorder (even predicted by current serving ministers) and almost entirely bereft of the plastic, highly-educated, functionally literate population required to allow for the vital continuity that a changing, broadly creative and fully productive society vitally needs,

Brexit will add to the woes. And not to a trivial extent.

There is utter contempt for the posture and level of competence of the British government in Europe. 

The world is aghast at the political collapse there. The Dutch prime Minister stated that Britain's society, economy, politic was in a state of developing collapse. He was correct. 

We see it happening before our eyes.

There is real deep-seated re-assessment of the condition of Britain in all the chancelleries of the world. And the re-assessment is in one direction only.

What do the Brexit people imagine this will do to the continuing commitment to invest, to engage, to risk with and to apply executive thought in the direction of Britain? The answer to that is simple. They have not got a blind clue.

The European Union is Self Serving

David Lott, retired Royal Air Force and commercial airline pilot and a founder of the United Kingdom Independent Party, is no stranger to these posts.  He has devoted more than a quarter century to securing Britain's independence from the European Union.  His feelings of nationhood are shared by many in the U.K. and other political parties in Europe.  As the E.U. represents over 500 million persons and a sizable portion of the world's economy, it is important for Americans and others around the globe to understand the feelings and forces at work during our time. - GNH

EU Self Serving

by David Lott

Here in Europe, away from the thrill of a US return towards regime change in Syria to complete the hat trick of nations scalped to hang from its belt, we across the Atlantic are facing a European Union at loggerheads with its own people.

The flags of the member nations of a federated Europe

By this I mean the interests of the EU Administration itself are put ahead of the interests of the people, which has become the norm in ‘democratic’ governments throughout the West. The EU though has a better excuse to be so self serving than most as it has no claim to be Democratic whatsoever.

The EU through its 5 presidents: Rotating President, President of the Council of Ministers, President of the Commission, President of the European Central Bank and President of the EU Parliament have outlined their requirements before trade negotiations can commence for the UK’s departure from the EU.

They are:

1.      A bill for 52 Billion Euros for the UK to pay up front

2.      No representation of the UK on the Council of Ministers for ALL meetings

3.      Forbid the UK to discuss free trade with any other country in the world during the Article 50 process

4.      Allow Spain to have a veto over the whole departure deal unless they are satisfied with the position of Gibraltar with respect to Spain.

5.      To declare that we shall not reduce our corporate taxes or remove anti- competitive EU regulation in order to have a commercial advantage over the EU

Four of these conditions are completely unacceptable and all are an insult to us as a nation which should force us, as a free nation to walk away and accept there will be no deal.

Let me address points 1 and 2 first as they belong together for the purposes of argument.

No official has provided any basis whatsoever for this huge charge of 52 billion euros. There has been no breakdown and no explanation, it is a figure plucked from the air. The UK during its 44 year membership has paid a net 200 billion Euros to the EU, we therefore have a stake in all the buildings and pension funds of the EU; the two Parliament buildings, one in Strasbourg (used one week per month) the other in Brussels (used the rest of the month), the enormous Berlayment Building, the Ministry of the Regions building, the European Central Bank Building in Frankfurt and many minor buildings. Surely they should pay the UK investment off, or at the very least allow the UK to charge rent for the buildings and interest on our stake in the massive pension funds.

 The nations that compose the 28 member Union

As we are not being allowed to have any say in the Council of Ministers at all on any subject we must look at our current payments which will amount to a net amount of a little more than 30 Billion Euros by the time we leave in March 2019. If we are to have no say then surely it is a case of no pay. The same premise which led directly to your War of Independence in the USA. Whilst there may be a case for us to continue to pay into some small projects in which we shall continue to partake in the future, the fact is that a 52 Billion Euros bill to leave is preposterous.

As to item 3 that we should not discuss future trade deals until we leave is just nonsense and I am pleased to see that our government is simply ignoring this pompous edict.

Item 4 is a red line and nothing to do with our leaving the EU and everything to do with Spain’s long running efforts to oust the British from Gibraltar. We protect our own as we did with the Falklands and the Gibraltarians voted in the last referendum by 98% to remain British so we will not and cannot betray them. If the EU insists upon this demand then, as a free nation, we must simply walk away from the negotiations and adopt World Trade Organisation rules and continue trading with the EU on the same basis as most other countries in the world such as the USA.

And item 5 would bind us to EU rules and compliance with the dictates of the European Court of Justice, in other words we would remain in the EU with no ultimate say on taxation and self regulation. Certainly not reflecting our referendum result.

These conditions are not an opening gambit, these EU ‘Presidents’ know they are completely unacceptable and would be rejected out of hand. But worse is the fact that by losing the ability to trade freely with the UK EU businesses will suffer and millions probably will be thrown out of work. We can live without French cheese or wine along with Belgian chocolate of even German cars. We can use markets elsewhere in the world and enjoy lower prices but it will not come to this because popular opinion has to be taken into account at the French, German and Italian elections.

Yes that word ‘popular’ arises again. If the politicians just look after their own interests’ then populism will kick them where it hurts.

Ukip Members of the European Parliament will be travelling around the EU nations over the next 18 months talking to small and medium sized businesses that stand to lose so much if the UK is deliberately alienated, or perhaps punished is a better word. They will find out just how little their masters in Brussels care about them and their families. A conclusion already drawn from the influx of migrants, the strain they are on services, the rise in terrorism, crime and rape in particular which they have to endure. They are abjured to hold hands in solidarity but political Islam laughs at them for such weakness.

In addition the southern nations are bleeding to death under a mountain of debt that is never repayable. They made mistakes for sure but they no longer have the ability with their own currency to inflate their way out of debt. Germany on the other hand thrives from the low value of the Euro.

The EU is reeling from rebellion within their ranks and if they punish the UK then these power lusting fools will pay the price and we shall perhaps all become free again within Europe but not within the EU. Sadly under these circumstances it will not be an orderly transition.

If EU politicians were to grow up, listen and then gradually loosen the strings such that it become a Common Market, which is what we thought we voted for in the first place, then their future as well as that of the UK could emerge peacefully and successfully. Right now though they are going hell for leather for more power and integration. We, in Britain, are taking to our own lifeboat because it is very necessary.  - David Lott, United Kingdom

Terry Responds....

by Glenn N. Holliman

In the United Kingdom, the energies of government are absorbed with planning for the exit from the European Union.  The issues of migration, terrorism and the direction of future trade agreements among nations are at the forefront.  In this blog, we have presented the pros and cons of Britain's decision.  

The challenges of the early 21st Century in Europe are similar to those of the United States. The uneven distribution of wealth in a global economy and the mass movements of people for both economic and refugee reasons disturbing existing domestic cultures have produced stresses on six continents.

How we as fellow human beings occupying the same planet, deal with inept governments, over population, climate change and a more equitable distribution of goods and services will determine the coming history of this century.

Our regular columnist, Terry Fields, a retired English businessman, who has domiciles in both France and the United States, shares his latest thoughts. - GNH


I put pen to paper today in part on the subject of Brexit, and in part on matters of greater weight that have helped precipitate it.

To some extent, I really wonder at the value of writing anything at all in the face of the new brutalism, but anyway, here goes.

The note posted recently by your UKIP writer has, to my mind a rather unpleasant tone of triumphalism. Fellow citizens who are horrified - and they are horrified - by this event are unchanged in their feelings. The deep wounds can easily be detected across the journalistic piece in Britain. I would say that for the people who voted against this course of action, there is no quiet acceptance of the reality. It splits the country wide apart, as indeed it always has been, but the divisions are now patent in a new and quite raw way.

To suggest otherwise is untrue.

Firstly a few words on the rather odd economic claims made.

The as-to-be-expected perturbations as a result of the vote continue. Different elements of the economy react violently as uncertainty strikes. To suggest or imply a trend response here in exports, currency values, inward investment and political stability is naive.

There has ONLY been a vote. By a quite small percentage victory, but on a large voter turnout.  NOTHING HAS YET HAPPENED.

The assertion of knowing the mind of the Prime Minster from all public statements so far is a conceit that is unjustified.

To date, nobody has suggested other than disconnected ideas, in public, from the cabinet.  What one can confidently assert, however, is as follows.

The desire to control migration has been repeatedly stated by this Prime Minister. The 'Brexit minister' has asserted that there needs to be access to the single market.

These statements can be set against the repeated assertions of the most powerful politicians in nation states and in the Commission. The G20 repeated the position.

The Europeans have - repeatedly - stated that the four freedoms are not negotiable in terms of single market access. A few second and third rank politicians have suggested some softening of this, but they are powerless; and they look to upcoming European elections when they speak.

The British consider they can define their needs, and indeed Mrs Merkel has said they need time so to do.

That does NOT imply a willingness to meet those needs.

The threat of UKIP to destabilise the Tory and Labour parties has indeed caused the Tory government to have adopted a UKIP-light stance. To that extent they will attempt brinkmanship with Europe in pushing border and migration controls, but doing this will be bloody for the economy. Lack of single market access and its anticipation is causing a large number of financial institutions to plan off-shoring activities, if the worst case scenario - which looks probable - occurs.

The real danger is not crystallized. It involves separation, partial exclusion, competition from more powerful states who have since 1975 co-operated with Britain.

Many key industries - in a nation largely de-industrialised and relatively de-skilled, de-capitalised and badly dependent on a small number of vulnerable activities - may and probably will be severely damaged by the action of the reality of triggering Article 50.

When that happens, there will not be negotiations on an equal basis. The mechanism allows the remaining 27 states to offer terms. They are 460 million of them. An integrated, high value added power block that largely trades internally against a state of 65 million, that trades overwhelmingly externally, and half of that via the EU, and already in some distress.

Britain may then 'request' different terms, but many of those states- and remember ALL need to agree - will have NO interest in allowing a derogation of migratory and travel freedom whilst offering single market access.

The entire mechanism of Article 50 empowers the European Union. Not the exiting party.

UKIP and others repeatedly asserted because Britain exports less than it imports from Europe it has 'negotiating power'. This ludicrous assertion is at the superficial level, and when looked at more profoundly, a sort of inversion-of-realty insanity that has characterised the referendum debacle. Utterly lunatic. For reasons that the intelligent do not require to be repeated.

Of course, the more extreme in such as UKIP say they want 'free trade' and no single market. They say they will 'trade with the world'. I suggest this is the dreams of an imagined nostalgia of very old men.

Why? Simple. Financial tariffs are falling as non tariff barriers are rising.

Those barriers reflect the creation of the new power blocks, increasingly stable and distinct, and the reforming of the old power blocks.

The US is, under both likely presidents, going to be very much more restrictive in its import proclivities. As will the EU. As will and as is Australia and Canada.

Of course 27 countries wish to sell goods into Britain under better terms than the EU allows. This does NOT help a country which wishes to sell more abroad.

The UK could indeed be the world leader in 'free trade' since almost nobody else actually does it.

Free trade was not the economic history of Britain - that is a populist illusion. The reality was Imperial preference. And anyway, free trade only really works to your advantage when you are relatively rich in all forms of capital. A far cry from the modern British state.

It is a bitter irony that - as so many of the people who voted against Remain wished to be protected from globalising competition - real free trade as per WTO terms will pitch the entire nation into raw one-on-one competition against the cheapest, the most coerced, the most un-free, the most truly wretched peoples working in the harshest environments the globe has to offer.

As we leave a high value-added, high-welfare, socially similar power block, with extensive protection for citizens, as is found in the USA, the proposal is to range across the world, seeking advantage where it can be found, and with capital in massive concentrations elsewhere, and with passive populations capable of out-competing the British in terms of education, work-ethic, often intelligence, skill-levels, equipment and supportive local state power.

It is hard to imagine a more utterly ruinous and lunatic policy.  A policy right for 1860. Insane now.

Only the voice of the hordes of the uneducated, the racist, the resentful and the brutal, egged on by simple lies and quite disgusting poster-images - when added to the very many others who were confused, frightened and coerced - could have produced this perverse result. The 'high minded' ' get-our-country-back' types, in reality rode on the coat tails of much nastier forces to win this vote. And the effects are being felt in the race and hate violence rippling through the country today.

This event came about because of the interplay of forces compressing living standards. One of them, additional to the new economies, is climate change, as well as the explosion of the populations of decertifying Mediterranean states who in desperation come now to Europe if they do not drown in the Mediterranean Sea first.

Well water levels in many parts of the Middle East, two decades ago at two metres depth, are now found at up to 1500 metres depth. NASA reports an alarming rise in global energy in the form of sea and atmospheric heat, of a scale not seen for enormous periods of time.

Of course, the deniers will say 'elites'. Just as another catastrophic populist said 'when I hear the word intellectual, I reach for my gun'.

And the response of the UKIP leadership? Let us turn Brexit into Clexit!  The folk who denied the value of the intellectual elites of the world. It also applies to climate change, it would appear. If science is a problem, deny it. If science gets in the way of other prejudices, set it aside, or modify its conclusions.

I watched the appearance of Farage at the Trump rally. Unlike the UKIP offering in these columns, I considered it to be as ill-mannered, unjustifiably triumphalist and inappropriate in a foreign country as it could have been. But of course a large number of people will have fallen for its almost messianic certainty and commanding confidence.

Rather like an equally unpleasant eruption of spleen emitted in the direction of the European Parliament. Many liked it. Many did not. I am in the latter category.

As to the background to this now universal instability in Europe and the United States, it is worth spending a moment to reflect.

The easy life of the West is over. The resource over-consumption, the horror of the coming change in climates across the planet, the immense overpopulation of human beings on the globe, the destruction of habitats and species across the planet, the dreadful reality already experienced in many places, and the vast competitive leveler of the new manufacturing states, the largest of which has most of the characteristics of a slave state, together with the exhaustion of the reserves of western capital left over from the western hegemony, do call for new strategies.

Far flatter income differences between citizens. Strategies of co-operative endeavour in the old high-income world, a move from consumption to technology shift, population management, concentrated urbanisation, an agricultural and distribution revolution, highly developed healthcare and well being management as man is forced to live less and less in the previously open and 'natural' environments where happiness could previously be obtained.

In all of that, the last thing needed is the perversion of looking to a past that  was - as described by the Leave campaign - never actually experienced, and in reality is a dream manufactured by perverse marketers with very dark motivations indeed.

The disconnected part-working, part-educated, part-functioning, left-aside in the rush to globalisation, are a central issue here. The matter of greatly improved social management is, as a result of the vote, a clear priority. In addition to providing sustenance and support to the 'excluded', of a scale never before thought to be required, the ruling elites are no doubt considering how to emasculate the supply of false and distorted information, and how to re-establish the authority of intelligence, previously made safe by the operation of representative democracy, opportunistically emasculated by Madame May, now under direct and violent attack by the forces of mass populism.

Under Madame May, the UK is not at present participating in this. But she is mortal, and will leave the scene one day.

I hope the rest succeed in their endeavours.

'The people'. The cry of Mao, Stalin, Mussolini, Hitler, and now more recent contributors.

And it always ends in tears - precisely for 'the people'. As it will for Britain. A great pity, particularly for its to-be-imprisoned young people.

Brexit may be a hiccup for the world, whilst potentially being a disaster for the best of British.

I would suggest Trump would be a full scale global myocardial infarction.

Terry Field, September 2016

To Stay or Not to Stay (in the E.U.) asks Britain

by Glenn N. Holliman

The comments from the last post continue.  My friend, Nancy, from Ontario, Canada posted a link suggesting if the United Kingdom exits the European Union, Canadians and USA citizens may need visas to visit Europe, an extra hindrance to free movement across the North Atlantic.

Steph in Australia asked for a conversation between David Lott of the United Kingdom Independent Party and Terry, his English neighbor and good friend in Normandy, France, who reluctantly favors continued union.  Steph sent some lovely photographs of birds in her garden, now autumn 'down under'.

 As the forthcoming tome is heavy on economics and history , it seems to me her pictures are an excellent bit of natural delight to begin our text.  Thanks Steph for asking for a dialogue and the beauty shared!

Terry replies in this post with a magnificent 'tour of the horizon' of the United Kingdom and today's global economy.  His tome is so massive that I have broken it into bits, some now and more later, allowing the reader to have one's coffee and intellectual stimulation over several mornings.  Here is Terry's first part of a piece that belongs in the Atlantic, Harpers or in a book that I keep encouraging him to publish. - GNH

MORE ON BREXIT by Terrance Field 

One of the readers of this 'blog' has asked that David and I engage in a conversation about the issue of British exit from Europe. I am a little reticent since I greatly value my friendship with David, and have taken a long time to consider this matter, having recently decided my position given all that I know of the arguments, both publicly stated, and those which I own myself.

I would firstly say that there can be no 'right ' or 'wrong' answer in this matter. All is opinion, highly subjective, and most professed outcomes are both incapable of proof and verification in advance, and are subject to forces not yet experienced or really comprehended.

I have been relatively agnostic on the matter. I am no longer.

My clear position now is that Britain should remain in the European Union. I am not happy about it, but there it is. All alternatives are worse.

I will endeavour to explain why but before I do so I think it very important to 'set the scene' as I see it, and thus I would make related but oblique observations (which require the indulgence of the reader) concerning the condition of the United Kingdom, and its recent history since the commencement of the First World War.

Britain has experienced a 'pivot point' in both fortune and the consequent psychological experience from 1914 onwards that I struggle to find parallels with anywhere in the advanced world.  Up to that point, Britain was a power of matchless excellence.

It was equalled in industry by Germany, and exceeded by the United States, but the experience of global imperial trade, combined with the exchange of civilisations and matchless financial power concentrated a sophistication in a small space not seen since the classical world.

The experience of almost effortless dominion, and the liberality and breadth of imagination that flowed from it was dented but largely intact until 1940.

That date changed everything. For ever.

The direct enemy would utterly destroy the British civilisation; would rip the mind from the culture, as well as sequestrate all assets and replace the British world view with the vigorous and radical German National Socialist world view.

Survival was unlikely; the consequences of collapse well considered, by a fearful but stoical people, and the United States was disinterested in action to protect and engage.

At that point, it was understood that the imperial project, long discussed in British cabinets as being a temporary phenomenon that would have to be replaced with a shared participatory 'commonwealth' (see cabinet papers from as early as the 1830s) and survival completely depended upon the United States.

If it entered the war, we would survive. If not, Britain would be occupied, and utterly ruined.

Churchill's words: 'For without victory there is no survival'.

This reality has been submerged in the mind of the British people by subsequent events, and the unconditional surrender of Germany. But not from the British ruling elites.

The post war period for Britain is, in historical terms, exceptional, in many ways.

First of all, the political dispensation has been one of universal suffrage. The political landscape has adjusted over the decades to better represent the changed power relationships between different elements of society that such a revolution in voting power has brought.

This has had an interesting effect, not experienced in the other large regional powers of the continent, since for them, bloody and truly catastrophic experiences have not allowed long political evolution and continuity.

In Britain, although the patrician classes gave way to a mixture that included the bourgeois and proletarian social groupings (I apologise for a touch of Marxist shorthand but it serves a purpose) they all continued to behave as though they were themselves patrician - as it were, one step removed from the consequences of their governmental actions.

This allowed for divestment of the Imperial mindset over a long period. And with patrician and generous allocation of policy and funding that other, more hard-nosed societies who had reconstructed themselves on the ruthless basis of logical-rational budgetary constraint without surplus resources being available could not consider for themselves.

This translates to incompetence and waste.

Britain thus perceived itself as a morally praiseworthy, large-minded, battered culture and society whose time would come again, albeit without the reach and feel of Empire.

As this continued for the first decades, post-war reconstruction continued apace, modest prosperity spread on an egalitarian basis, and the British civil service applied itself to the 'management of decline'.

Little regard was paid to the Europeans by the British for the first couple of decades. They were busy at home, and the past had to be overcome.

 The first real interest British society showed in matters European happened in the mid to late 1960s. Britain was experiencing a transition from post war reconstruction to steady state economics, and it was doing really quite poorly in making the change.

For a hundred years and more, Britain had been a maritime trading power, with trade routes guaranteed by 'Imperial Preference,' an access control that offered immense maritime and shipping advantage   to British trade. This had resulted in a superfluity of raw materials of all types being traded, processed and redistributed to imperial customers and suppliers.

One result is this luxury was the lack of sophistication in British chemical engineering, and other related skills, that had developed particularly in Germany to supply synthetic raw materials in place of the natural products habitually used by the British. This harsh discipline (amongst others), found in Germany, gave them a great advantage in competition in the post war period; The German nation had found its competitiveness.

In short, Germany, aided by Marshall Plan, and massive surviving industrial capacity, was comprehensively out-competing Britain. France seemed to prosper by the 'dirigist' state.

It showed. The German 'wirtschaftswunder' (economic miracle) delivered a sleek, rich, modern society and environment for Germans to enjoy, that was simply unavailable to the British.

France seemed glamorous.

At the same time, the strife between working people and managers of enterprises in Britain declined to trench warfare, their markets disappearing, their capital leaching away, their opportunities bleaker by the day. The social and economic construct that made for success seemed to have deserted Britain. Nobody knew how to recover the situation.

There were some successes, usually associated with technologies that the 'national consciousness' made an effort to promote. Military aircraft were adventurous in design and performance, even civil airliners were developed, but that sub-economy survived at ruinous cost, and in the end was abandoned as simply unaffordable. Henceforth, military design and manufacture would concentrate on exports; thus glamour projects died a death never to be resuscitated.

All the while, there was the painful experience of the deconstruction of Empire. As this progressed, roughly from the late 1940s to the mid 1960s, a cultural deconstruction of the past proceeded apace. The Imperial past was, in general, vilified and regretted by the Left, the then dominant force. The 'Tory' world view went into sharp decline, and the new world of egalitarian 'liberal' left wing 'progressive' politics become the unchallenged view of what it was to be British.

As a British prime minister, Harold Macmillan, said - 'we are all socialists now'.

The currency value collapsed against all other major currencies, nationalised industries 'packed' labour, soviet-style, personal taxation stood at 83% on earned and 98% on 'unearned' (i.e. investment yielding dividend) income, competitiveness collapsed, productivity fell as massive overtime grew in factories starved of capital and competent management dominated the union - management conversation.

At one point, Henry Ford Jnr visited the British prime minister discussing whether or not Britain could be governed. 

I attended a GM senior managers meeting in the US where there was total mirth and hilarity at the thought of investing in plant in the UK.

Through all this, there was social deference between the major 'classes'. This replicated the life of India with the caste system, and was a sort of emotional camouflage, to hide the real collapse in the condition and prospects for the economy.

In 1976, the IMF began to manage the British budget directly.

All this sets the scene for British accession to the then 'Common Market'....to be continued in the next post.

Comments welcome as always....